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In this day and age of everything being connected, we expect software problems to be solved with a patch that we receive over the Internet. Japanese car manufacturer Toyota seems to have forgotten that was an option when designing the Prius hybrid, as it is now having to do an expensive and time consuming recall of some 1.9 million cars.

Toyota has discovered that 3rd generation Prius have a software issue that can make some of the transistors in the car’s boost converter overheat due to “thermal stress.” While this won’t cause anyone to have an accident, the car could potentially shut itself down while being driven in order to protect against further damage. At the very least, the power on offer will be greatly reduced while driving.

With this being a software problem, you’d think affected Prius owners could just hook up their car over WiFi, connect to a Toyota server, and download a software patch to fix the issue. But that’s not an option with these cars. Instead, Toyota needs to contact every owner, invite them to visit a local dealer, and wait while a 40 minute software update is applied.

If this was an issue identified on a Tesla, then the patch could be downloaded by the owner, but Toyota isn’t that advanced yet with its hybrid cars. I think they’ll ensure 4th generation Prius can patch from home, though, when they total up how much this recall is going to cost.

Of the 1.9 million cars requiring the patch, over a million are located in Japan, 713,000 in the US, and around 31,000 in the UK.